“My Love From Another Star” Initial Review: A Story of Love, Aliens, Immortality and Watching a lot of Vampire U.S. Shows.

Hello. This is a Korean in America. We
have been seeing K-dramas that are trying some new gimmicks to differentiate
themselves from series that came before. And, usually they are just window
dressing to spice up the basic K-drama format that we have seen tons of times
before.

Does “My Love From Another Star”
which uses an “Alien” gimmick not very common in K-dramas break this practice?

Like many
of my colleges that talk about shows on the internet, I have seen a lot of
shows during my life. This includes both U.S. and Korean Shows. As a Hollywood
kid living in Korea during the end of U.S. syndicated shows dominance of the Korean
air waves, I actually have seen more U.S. Shows than Korean shows. However,
that is another story for another article.

In any
case, when you see a lot of stuff, you notice how the writers of these shows
get their ideas or “borrow” them from other shows that came before their time.
On one end of the spectrum, you see odd or obscure references here and there.
On the other end, you see structural or thematic elements lifted from other
shows and incorporated into a new show.

In regard
to this subject, Korean dramas are pretty interesting because of their
homogeneity. I have mentioned in some
previous articles such as the Kdrama 101 series, the Korean dramas are
basically one single genre with multiple subgenres. As a result, Korean dramas
have a very narrow set of story structures they utilize. More important to this
article and “My Love From Another Star”
is that Korean dramas are only interested in a few themes which include
revenge, love, family, and etc.

Because of
this homogeneity, two things happen whenever a K-drama is trying to insert
something out of its wheel barrel. First, it is very evident. Second, it never
fully commits to this new thing. Rather, it is pasted on using duct tape.

These two cover the case of “My Love
From Another Star”.

The matter of Jun Ji
Hyun

The art of acting is not to act.
Once you show them more, what you show them, in fact is bad acting.

--Anthony Hopkins

Before
anything, we have to talk about Jun Ji
Hyun.

She is terrible in the first episode
of this series.

I have seen
Jun Ji Hyun since she got her big
shot in a printer commercial dancing on TV.

Think the product was a LG Cannon
Color printer but not sure…

She was
instant smash hit and has been a mainstay in the Korean commercials for more
than a decade. And this reveals what she is.

She is a professional commercial
model!

She is not a professional actress.

I am saying
this as someone who watched her on TV for a long time and even saw 3~4 of her
movies. Jun Ji Hyun has never been a
professional actress. She has never displayed a talent in acting or an effort
to learn how to act.

Rather she
treats acting as if it was the same as posing in commercials. With Jun Ji Hyun, she has gotten away with
this by some degree because of her commercial know-how and the skill of the
directors.

Just
look at her movies!

You can
just see how the directors use her and how they cut around her to limited the
amount of actual acting required by her. In contrast, Jun Ji Hyun has not been able to really get into K-dramas because
they do not have the time or patience to cuddle her.

So, when
you try “My Love From Another Star”,
you have to take into account that Jun Ji
Hyun will be the weakest link acting-wise.

A good thing is that going into the
second episode, the creative team seems to be getting a better handle on what
her limits are. As a result, it is less jarring in how bad her acting is.

The plot

Aliens didn't come down to Earth and
give us technology. We invented it ourselves. Therefore it can never be
alienating; it can only be an expression of our humanity.

--Douglas Coupland

The plot is
centered around a terribly mismatched couple who do not really have a hope in
getting together. Not only is the female a so called “Top actress”, the guy is
an “Alien”.

Yes, that is an alien with a capital
“A”.

The
“Alien”, who looks just like a Korean male for some reason and is wearing 21th
century cloths when he first arrived on earth for some also unknown reason, has
been around for more than 400 years. So, since he is male, we get two
unnecessary shower scenes in the first two episodes alone. Also, since there is
a fate element to the story, not only do we get flash back scenes set about 15
years before the present using a younger actress, we also get flash back scenes set during the Joseon
period using the same actress.

What is this show? Is
this a Sci-fi show!

Since there
is an “Alien” in the show, you may think that it may be a science fiction show
which is not really common in K-dramas.

Do not get worked up!

However, it
is not really a Sci Fi show. The show
seems to skew too much towards the off beat fantasy prevalent in K-dramas
recently. To understand what this show
is, we have to look at how the "Alien" is portrayed.

He is just this being with some not
well defined powers that is basically human but thinks that he is
different.

He is this somewhat alienated being
that starts to form human contact by meeting this female.

Does that
make you think of someone? A pale guy that sparkles and have some blood
problems...

“My Love from the stars" has
more in common with "Twilight" than anything science fiction.

The
interesting factor of “My Love from the
stars" is not that it is a fantasy with some Sci Fi coating. It is
that it is similar to the modern vampire genre coming out of the U.S.

“Humans, if nothing else, have the
good sense to die.”

― Markus Zusak, The
Book Thief

Aliens, Vampires, and Immortality.
Is the writer a U.S. Drama fan?

One has to pay dearly for
immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.

--Friedrich Nietzsche

While
seeing the show, I got a feeling of Déjà vu. It was like seeing elements of various
U.S. shows pasted on to a basic K-Drama skeleton. The fact that the basic
K-drama format was strongly intact made the foreign element more pronounced.

While the
most of the characters are basically K-drama archetypes, the main relationship
dynamic between the spoiled but lonely actress, who cannot act, and the alien
is similar to that of the a canceled U.S. vampire show called "Moonlight". In that show, the main
couple was formed by a mortal female and an immortal vampire.

The vampire had
saved the female when she was young and she had essentially imprinted on him.
The two were then separated until the female was in her 30s when she had become
an Internet journalist. Once the two reunite, it is clear that they are tied
together with this unbreakable bond. You could even say it was fate.

You see the similarities between the
two shows!

Even both of the shows have this odd interview style narrative in its pilots. While both of them seems to take it from the movie and book "Interview of a vampire", in the case of “My Love from the stars", it is just weird.

“My Love from the stars" is not exactly
a copy of “Moonlight”. For example, the characters are not really the same. The
female character is just a common K-drama archetype. The male lead is rather
more interesting. He seems out of place
with K-drama archetypes.

He is distant and brooding.

He is silent.

He is observant of people

At the same
time, I cannot say that the male lead of “Moonlight”
and the male lead of “My Love from the
stars" are a match. The male lead of “My Love from the stars “feels like an amalgamation of various immortal
characters including “Henry” from a vampire TV series called “Blood Ties”, and
Death from the movie “Meet Joe Black”. Toss
in some “Dorian Grey” and you get the male lead of “My Love from the stars".

Rather than
being a knockoff, “My Love from the stars”
is in the realm of being inspired by “Moonlight”. Not only is “My Love from the stars" inspired by
one show, it seems to be inspired by modern immoral fiction which include
vampire stories. This is where we get into some very interesting points. “My Love from the stars” actually tries to graph
the theme of “immortality” on to a Korean drama which is very unique.

An Immortal walking
the streets of a K-drama… Will this be accept it or reject it?

Because of
its homogeneity, Korean drama and its audience have a very narrow scope of
themes they are interested in. This includes family, wealth, revenge, and love.
The theme of immortality is not something that interest mainstream Korean
literature.

Why you ask?

What is immortality
literature about really?

It is the
examination of one’s mortality and legacy. And Korean mainstream audiences have
no taste for these themes. It even does not really cover the theme of “middle
age crisis” which has become a common theme running throughout western literature.

In Korean
society, one’s mortality and legacy are tied closely to external social structures.
At the wider end, society determines the value of one’s life. At the narrow
end, family plays the same role. This is a partial reason for all the plots involving
parental control over one’s children. This also true for the plots regarding
the CEO of a conglomerate focusing on the organization itself as if that was
the important thing and not the stuff that the organization can do for him.

It is not just greed or power! It is
the value and legacy of one’s life we are talking about.

It is just
that this is not determined by the individual but the smaller and larger societies.

Immortality
literature, which includes vampires, focuses on this problem also but on an individualist
level.

You are an immortal walking around
and you see all the people you know die before you.

It is the
ultimate form of trying to find the value of one’s life isolated from one’s surroundings.
For Koreans, this is a difficult concept to swallow or understand since we have
been indoctrinated to evaluate ourselves using others’ opinions and not the opinions
of ourselves.

So, the
fact that “My Love from the stars"
is, at least, trying to incorporate themes that are as alien to Koreans as
actual aliens is interesting. I think that this does make “My Love from the stars" special by
this alone. If the show can keep this up
using her star power, I can endure Jun Ji
Hyun’s poor acting.

At the end

“My Love from the stars" is a show
that has promise. The talent and effort behind the scenes seems higher or at
least creative compared to some recent shows such as …MHIYD…? The cast
excluding the lead actress is OK although this is a wait and see matter. And
the show is trying to open up the set of themes covered by Korean dramas a little.
I just wish that it would end up as just another gimmick like …M*****’s Sun…

I give “My Love from the stars" a recommendation to watch at least for 4 episodes.